Chard and Kale Salad

Eating green leafy vegetables is one of the healthiest things you can do. Especially in the wintertime, when your body needs it the most. When it comes to leafy veggies, the darker the leaf the better is is for you. This puts kale and chard, two winter favorites, right at the top of the list.

The thing about kale and chard, however, is that the leaves tend to be much thicker and therefore tougher to chew. They nearly always have to be cooked. Using them in cold salads is usually out of the question. Usually.

Things like citric acid and salt tend to help break down leafy material. By applying these ingredients to the leafs and allowing them to "cook" overnight, a cold kale salad becomes an easy and delicious option to your wintertime menu! Remember, this salad must be made at least one day ahead!

Begin by whisking together in a large bowl:

3/4 c olive oil

1/2 c lemon juice

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 t sea salt

1 t cayenne pepper

Trim::

1 bunch chard

1 bunch kale

Wash the leaves well and shake off all excess water. Rub the marinade into each leaf real well and set the leaves aside in a large bowl. Do not neglect this step! It is very important to rub the marinade into each leaf! When all the leaves have been marinated, add to them:

1 small red onion, thinly sliced

2 medium avocados, cubed

1-1/2 c shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced

Pour the marinade over the salad and mix well by hand, mashing the avocados into the leaves. When well mixed and thoroughly coated, cover the salad and refrigerate overnight. The leaves will cook in the lemon juice and salt and should be wilted the next day. Garnish with:

seeds from 1 medium pomegranate

or

toasted walnuts

A tasty side salad any time of year. It's also great on its own, garnished with a piece of salmon or grilled chicken.

Cheers!

The Great Sauerkraut Experiment (Part 3)

It has been 5 weeks now since I started my first batch of sauerkraut. I tried another taste today and decided it had fermented perfectly! It was tangy but not too sour and the cabbage, while soft, still had a faint crunch at the thicker parts. Now it's time to can it.

This part of the process is fairly simple. In one large pot, I brought about 6-8 quarts of water to a rolling boil and processed quart sized mason jars and lids for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, in a second large pot, I heated the sauerkraut to a simmer. To make this easier, I cooked to sauerkraut in two batches. I packed the jars and topped them off with brine before sealing them. I ended up with seven and a half quarts of sauerkraut.

Which brings us to Batch #2. You would think that seven plus quarts of sauerkraut would be enough to last for a while. I mean, I would certainly think so. My wife Kat, on the other hand, thinks differently. Kat is a cabbage convert, you see. When we met, she hated all things cabbage. I've slowly been bringing her around. One of her new enthusiasms is sauerkraut, which she has become an even bigger proponent of after the success of Batch #1. So we're going to do another bucket of kraut, this one even bigger than the last. In this batch I'm using:

2 large heads green cabbage, sliced thin

1 head purple cabbage, sliced thin

4 yellow onions, sliced thin

4 large cayenne peppers, seeded and sliced thin

5 jalapeno peppers, seeded and sliced thin

5 carrots, shredded

2 T caraway seeds

1 T yellow mustard seeds

1 T brown mustard seeds

1 T celery seeds 

sea salt

The purple cabbage will lend a ruby color to the sauerkraut. I also added a great deal more peppers than Batch #1 as spiciness was the one thing Kat and I felt was missing from that batch. The first batch made about a half of a bucket with two gigantic heads of cabbage. The cabbage I'm using for Batch #2 are almost as large, and I decided that three heads would do a better job of filling the bucket.

Once again, I put all the ingredients in the bucket, layer by layer, with liberal sea salt sprinkled on top of each layer. It is important to remember to press down each layer as hard as you can, compacting the kraut as tightly as possible into the bucket. If the salt doesn't extract enough liquid from the vegetables to completely cover the top of the cabbage after a few hours, add salted brine. I have never had to do this, at least not yet. I put a plate on top of the cabbage and sealed plastic containers of water on top of the plate to hold it down so that it continually presses on the sauerkraut, keeping it all under the brine.

And so we begin another five week wait. I may wait longer and let it get really strong, if I can keep Kat out of it that long! I'll let you know how it turns out. As always, feel free to post your comments, questions and stories below.

Cheers!

Raspberry Honey Vinaigrette

Yesterday, my wife came home with fresh produce, including an assortment of cherry tomatoes. I've been a bit under the weather and don't feel too much like making anything complex, so I opted instead for a simple garden salad. We have a variety of fresh greens growing in our garden, now seemed like a good time to harvest a quick and easy meal!

This led me to contemplate a good salad dressing. There was I time when I bought my salad dressings at the store. I look back at those days and chuckle at my innocent naivete. Those were the days before I discovered how incredibly easy salad dressings are to create and how much better (and cheaper!) they are when you make them yourself. They can be a lot of fun too, mixing different ingredients together into new and mouthwatering combinations. This was the task before me today, as I had run out of my previous batch of dressing!

Looking in the refrigerator, I found a dish of fresh raspberries. I picked them a couple of days prior and they were now a deep dark red, almost purple, color. There was about a handful of them. I gathered together a few other ingredients and whisked them together in a bowl. I suppose I could have used a food processor too but why make such a mess?

In the bowl were:
1/2 c fresh very ripe raspberries
1/2 c olive oil
1/4 c sweet vermouth
1/4 c red wine vinegar
1/4 c honey
1/2 t dried basil
1/2 t salt
1/2 t black pepper

I whisked all the ingredients together until they were well mixed. Then I let the dressing sit while I went out back and collected green leaf lettuce, arugula, and mustard greens. I also grabbed a few more raspberries off the bushes. Back inside, I assembled these together with the tomatoes, grated Parmesan cheese and a few homemade croutons. The only thing that I really wished I had at this point was a nice piece of smoked salmon!

A fresh and flavorful lunch, right out of the backyard! What could be more simple and satisfying? I feel better already!